Sanctuary
by TheConspiracyTheory
Summary: After the war, no dreams remained. And with no dreams, there was no future, unless you had the heart and desire to continue living in search for that future. Yullen


I've been writing this for ages, and I only ever worked in it when I was in the mood to and it is I admit rather moodswingy if you look into it. I neglected for anyone to beta this, because the grammar, loss of information is meant to be. Kanda has always been a character close to my heart. There's more to him than meets the eye and somehow I can relate, even though it's not on the same extent. It is slightly OOC, but to tell a story with the Kanda we see in Man, well it doesn't suffice. It's also not perfectly following the canon, like with most non-au things I write. There are sensitive issues, so be warned and it does contain 'mature' themes. If you don't understand it, read in between the lines, there is quite a bit of depth to this and I'll say no more.

Summary: After the war, no dreams remained. And with no dreams, there was no future, unless you had the heart and desire to continue living in search for that future.

**

* * *

Sanctuary**

I remember the days where life meant something, I remember the moments where I had a purpose. Now I just wander the streets. People stare as well, it's not like they see an Asian every day. Or perhaps it is the hair, I don't know and wouldn't care. I remember the end, the end of all the bloodshed and fighting, I remember and because I remember, the bloodshed and fighting will always follow.

In the end, everything I knew my life to have become in the world was destroyed. Everything that stood for me in beliefs and values, gone, it was all gone in a flash. Everything I, we fought for and everything we fought against, gone in the very end. Most people in the end relished victory, yet I walked away from the festivities. My goal and only purpose in life was gone.

_全て__ … _

There were the days at the beginning where things were different and I remember those moments. What went through my head those moments stayed in my head.

There were a few people I remember that stood out to me, in the crowd.

First there was the apprentice Bookman, Lavi. He was everything I wasn't and his persistency was perhaps the only thing that held the ropes together. If he was the sun then I was the moon, if he was the sky then I'd be the sea, if he was the flower of the rose then I was the thorns.

We weren't exact opposites, we co-existed, yet he was everything I wasn't and that I envied. He could socialize were as my form of socializing was yelling. He was the brightness, the light that could alleviate any shadow and I was a walking storm cloud. He was the eternal flame and I was the water that tried to extinguish it.

But even if it was all a guise of being Bookman, he will probably be my most important friend in my entire life and there is no more to that than that.

_Next time we see each other we'll be perfect strangers._

_But even if I'm not 'Lavi' anymore, you'll still be Yuu Kanda and that will be enough for both of us, because I existed, even if it was in a memory._

_So it's not 'Goodbye' but 'See you later', even if the next time you see me, I'll be the perfect stranger, Yuu-chan…_

… _guess that's the last time I'll ever say that again._

_See ya later._

I think that time I let it go, just one time out of the hundreds, I didn't hate him saying my first name with a female suffix.

_バカ 兎_

* * *

Lenalee Lee, I never ever got to truly know her, we were only every comrades no more. But she was special in a way unlike most people I knew. She never bugged me and was just there, like a chair that you never notice, yet you rely on it. She was strong, far stronger than I ever could and I saw that. You could say that she would be the only woman I would ever love, yet not in the romantic sense, after all the horrors of war could never be understood.

_Nii-san and I are going back to China, I'm not sure what will happen in the future, but in a world without Akuma, Noahs, Innocence and Exorcists is a far brighter world than one with it. _

_I know Kanda that this is all you've ever known, but there is an entire world out there for you to explore, Japan will rebuild itself in time and the carnage we walked will merely be a memory that will become ashes that will turn into dust. _

_Take my advice Kanda start anew, trust me, holding onto the past won't do you any good. After all humans walk with time and time will not turn back, hmm?_

_Goodbye Kanda, and if we ever meet again let me hope that I'll meet you with a smile, even though that'll be impossible, make the effort?_

_笑顔？ 嘘して_

* * *

After you've lived through a war, you'll never truly reintegrate back into society, what you've seen would never be understood by the people walking past you. It's almost like on a one way street everyone walks north, but you walk south. I was shunned from society. No one would understand me, although it was perhaps my own fault in locking myself up, there was no one that went through the same hardship and no one to relate, thus I stopped seeing the sun and the moon became my friend.

There was one more person in our happy band. Allen Walker.

After the end I never saw him, and no farewells were made, perhaps he just moved on like all the others, and we never got along. But knowing him, he's probably still replaying the moments and regretting every one of them.

_Idiot._

* * *

If I believed in fate, then I would call it that. But if fate were real then I would not have been an Exorcist. Yet I believed in chance; whether it were one in two or one in a million, chance was real and it was by chance that I decided to walk down the streets of London on a cold winter's night where I hadn't gone out in weeks. It was chance that our eyes met. If that chance never happened then I didn't know what would have become of me as I downward spiralled.

Chance not fate.

* * *

"Kanda!"

I remained silent, not because I wanted to ignore the person in front of me, but because I was unsure.

"It's been a long time, remember me? Allen Walker?"

_Of course I remember, who would forget an annoying brat like you._

"It's cold outside, let's go someone indoors."

I followed him into a café along the street; it had green tea.

We made our orders and he began to blab, on and on about things I didn't need to hear.

"I just want some peace and quiet."

"Sorry."

A long silence followed, I stared into my cup the mellow clear olive rippled as more was poured in by another hand.

"There's one place though," he began, "The Ark was never destroyed, but there is only one room now."

"It's the Piano room, and that means I can recreate the whole Ark, but I don't need it… and I don't want it either. Come, if you want to."

He dropped a few coins on the table and left.

I followed, I don't remember why, I just did, one foot after the other as we entered a world different from the one I had come to know. A world with only one room, a world of eternity. Perhaps it was the heaven that humanity sought for, or perhaps it was Utopia.

* * *

"I hate white walls."

"Then we'll make them black."

Black was a comforting colour, it reminded me of home. The white however reminded him the days when I was an experiment. The white washed walls, the white lab coats, the sterile white, the pure white, I hated all of it. That was probably why I hated him from the beginning; white hair, innocent smile and everything about his being untainted by the cruelties of this world.

"You can stay here if you wish, and you can come and go as you will."

* * *

Time passed, each day he left me to my own devices. I was free to leave the Ark and do whatever took to my fancy, yet there was nothing in this world that interested me. Instead I stared out the windows into the vast unchanging blue of Ark's sky, lost in time and sooner or later, time became lost to me as well.

"You have to go out, Kanda, just because I offered a place for you to stay, doesn't mean you can just stare at nothing everyday—

_I'm not staring at nothing, I was staring at the sky, the endless blue sky_

– and you can't just sit around doing nothing a well –

_But I have eternity._

– you've got to cherish the moments in your life and not waste them –"

"SHUT UP, you idiot, low life, what do you know? GO AWAY... it's not like you would care anyway, you're just spiting words, emotionless words, fuck you."

_Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, like hell I need you help or your counterfeit care. _

_もう__我慢できない_

I heard footsteps, loud ones, stomp to the door, not noticing they were mine. The door handle rattled.

"Let me out."

"No."

"Let me _out."_

"No, calm down, you don't know what you're doing, Kanda."

"Aren't you contradicting yourself? You just said that I should go out more often and now you're not letting me out."

"Not in the state you are like now."

"Then what do you propose I do?"

"Calm down."

"And what if you're the one that is making me angry?"

"What do you want me to do, to not make you angry then."

"Then stop being a martyr."

I don't know what possessed me, but the next moment he was pinned down and buttons flew into the air. I tasted blood, my teeth had sunk into his shoulder, the taste was relishing, alive and young, but pure.

I hated it, I hated it so much, yet I felt myself respond to his cries; there was no going back.

Sex was made to be messy. I fumbled blindly at his pants, before ripping the ridiculous things off. If I had been more aware that moment it would have been a less painful experience, but consumed in anger I drove myself into his dry hole and it hurt, it hurt like fuck. His ass clenched around me and even amidst the pain I still found myself aroused.

Whatever it was, something made my continuous thrusting smoother, thinking back it was probably blood. But at the moment I didn't give a damn crap, I needed an anger outlet and I hated his guts. There was no passion in it. It was almost rape.

Yet he came, bringing me over the edge too. The ecstasy drove through my veins as I mutilated his purity and as I pulled out, the satisfaction I should have felt wasn't there, instead he stared back at me with dead panned eyes and I did the only thing I had ever known to do in a situation like this, run.

And the door was opened easily.

* * *

I never felt so much agony in my life, before now, it was painful. I… me… I had violated one of my comrades from war and it was disgusting, what overtook me I didn't know, but all I felt was overwhelming agony.

All I wanted to do was to sink down to the ground, close my eyes and never open them again.

Going through the war changed me, being an Exorcist changed me, shaped me to who I was today and with the end of the war, there were only losses no victories and the greatest lost was my life. My life was full of nothing, an ironic statement in that, yet it was true. I was still young with a whole life ahead of me, yet with nowhere to use that life. A life that wasn't required and would only be a burden.

I jumped off a cliff.

I stabbed my own heart.

I drank poison.

I put a bullet in my head.

My body refused to succumb to death's embrace; my Lotus Curse kept me alive. Yet that single Lotus that my life was tied to went missing. It had been with me since too long and to have it gone now made me feel insecure. It granted me almost immortality, as long as every petal didn't fall. Was being immortal really that great? Life would get boring eventually and everyone that you once knew would grow old and die without you. However what was worse was that my life itself was purposeless and as the days dragged on I found my feet taking me to the café from so many days ago.

The last petals should have fallen, yet I was still alive and well, something was off and I would bet that he was involved. However he was impossible to find and so I let my instincts do the thinking.

He was there, staring into his cup of Earl Grey tea and he looked up, this time his façade no longer there. The eyes that stared at me reflected so much.

I finally understood.

* * *

"Do you regret it?"

"Regret what?"

"Sleeping with me."

"If you were Satan himself I wouldn't regret it."

"Oh? When did you become religious, Kanda?"

"Since five seconds ago."

We had returned to the Ark, it was almost a silent conversation most of the way and yet I felt… euphoria. It was almost as if the light bulb that died so many years ago had relit itself and it was then I realised, it was self-fulfilling impended doom.

We were left behind as other's lives moved on.

Time moved on in reality, yet in the Ark it was still, yet changes still occurred, I found myself opening up more and Allen began to show his true colours under his façade. He cussed worse than me which was enough to be said.

Moments became lost to me as the era's moved on by, everything we once fought for only lived in our memories. We never did grow old; me because of my curse and Allen because…

"The Ark is part of me, as long as the Ark never dies, then I will be immortal, and anyway, God would never accept someone like me."

* * *

I had always wondered what had happened to my Lotus, after that incident, I never saw it again, yet even though I was sure that every petal was sure to be fallen, I was still alive and healthy.

The truth was the lotus was just an illusion. An illusion to remind me that my days were limited, yet I had finally broken free of that illusion.

I was free.

* * *

I found comfort in the person I'd expected least of, I had found love in the most unexpected place, I had discovered myself and we had discovered each other and that was when I realised that every story would eventually have its happy ending for everyone, eventually.

We ran into others again. We visited Lenalee not long after, she was doing well with her brother, who still ran dangerous experiments. Last time I saw her, it was down the street, she was holding a child and our eyes met, perhaps she recognised me or perhaps not, but I smiled. The Kanda Yuu she had known would have never smiled.

The idiot rabbit had succeeded Bookman after he died and had picked up an apprentice, the greatest human wars of history were taking place, the first world war, then the second and so many lesser ones. I noticed it every now and then in my peripheral vision. But the idiot had grown up, become more mature and serious, but even so in his aging, his bright red hair seemed to stay the same and so did his fighting skills.

Yet as the years moved on again we were left behind once again as everybody left the world. Of course we met them again, but in a new form and face.

And so the twentieth century came to an end, it was a long and violent century, yet filled with discoveries and development. For how many more years we'd have each other I would not know, yet living the moments of now were enough. The times that I had lost last century could never be regained, yet with a new century I were to start anew and in our timeless void we had all of eternity.

Welcome to my sanctuary.

* * *

And I thank you for getting through all that, it's been a long time since I first started and it's reminded me many things about life since re-reading it. Perhaps it wasn't your cup of tea, or perhaps you could relate, either way you can interpret it however you wish, after all the best things are left untold. I thought about making it a multi-chap and perhaps there'd be more depth to it, but no, not for this fic.


End file.
